oblivion ; minsung

"all that remains"

Minho is warm to the touch. He smells good. Like lemongrass, Jisung thinks. He can smell it in Minho's hair when he breathes.

The lights are still flickering. Less and less. It was nearly blinding when their rage was at its height. At least the windows didn't shatter, though they did rattle.

Sometimes the demon inside him stirs, whispering violent things in his ear. Each time he holds Minho tighter. Breathes. Counts backward from one hundred. He knows, if he lost control now, he would have no one left.

Nini is dead.

He'll never hear her voice again. She won't be here to talk him down. Or scold him. Or pitter-patter her feet while Grandpa plays his guitar. Or hang the laundry from the smallest socks to the biggest sheets.

Grandpa is dead too. It happened too early. If he had just held on a little longer, Jisung might have been able to keep him alive. But maybe that wouldn't have worked out either.

His grandparents had known each other all their lives, though they were married to other people. Once their partners had died, they made a life together. Grandpa became like family to Jisung. Nini called Jisung 'Little' because he was thin as a rake, but also because he tried to emulate Grandpa, everything down to his mannerisms, his hobbies, his calluses.

He wanted Jisung to graduate high school. Jisung doesn't know what difference it would have made. But he would have liked to see his grandfather in the crowd, wearing the suit he saved for special occasions. He would have liked his grandfather to be proud of him.

Jisung doesn't remember his mother. He's never missed her.

He doesn't remember anything before Nini. She used to say that he does remember, just not in memory. His body remembers. He carries his past with him. Sometimes he thinks it's bullshit. Sometimes he knows it's true. There are emotions in him that he can't understand, emotions too big for his body.

His father is alive. He's just not around. He left after Jisung's mother died — overdose, he thinks, though Nini wouldn't say — leaving Jisung, 18 months old, alone in a filthy apartment for a whole day and a whole night, until Nini came to collect him. She took care of him like a son from then on. After her real son abandoned them. He abandoned Jisung. Jisung thinks he hates him, even if he doesn't remember him.

Minho is warm.

Nini is dead.

Jisung is tired.

The lights go out after Minho leaves the house.

—

The guys from the funeral home take Nini away. He can't watch. He doesn't want his last memory of her to be cold and pale, though she didn't look much better when they said goodbye. (They barely said goodbye. They just held hands while he cried and she didn't.)

He stays in bed for the rest of the day. And the night, and the next day. Every so often he hears a knock at the front door. He thinks the neighbours are coming to offer condolences. That's what they did when Grandpa died. Nini didn't get the door back then, and he doesn't now either.

Jisung calls in sick to work. He can't eat. He can't sleep. He just rots in bed. He's never felt so alone, not even at two in the morning at the construction site, listening to rats rummage through the trash. Not downtown, an invisible man with a silent guitar. Not as a baby in an empty apartment, hungry and crying.

All he can do is scribble in his notebook. Endless revising. It's where he's most comfortable. Chasing perfection.

You're gone / gone as soon as you came
Fight the time / though it's a losing game
The seconds fly away / the clock's taken flight
Knew you'd leave me sleepless when I saw you that night